What a Fabulous evening filled with amazing women and friends!  And what a thrilling honor to have our work recognized and appreciated!  Our Utah Valley (and beyond) communities know who we are and know what we’re doing, and people are joining us in droves.  It’s been an amazing 2 years of service and goodness.

I love that this award is called the Rainmaker Award.  It seems perfectly suited to the work we do, drop by drop, bit by bit, piece by piece, changing lives one by one.  As I look back over my life so far, it feels rich with important experiences that have allowed me to network and bring people together who need each other.  I have been fortunate to live with and love people of many cultures, and feel and understand their needs.

When I learned about Days for Girls, it all came together in my heart and mind, and I suppose I have turned into a Rainmaker, of sorts.  We have mobilized thousands and thousands of women and young women and organizations and non-profits and humanitarians and we have made and sent kits out into dozens of countries.  The lives of thousands of girls have been changed.  Their future children and families will never be the same because their mothers were educated and kept safe.

It just took a little doing (every day, all day, week after week, month after month) to start this ball rolling.  Now it won’t be stopped.  It cannot be stopped.  The word is out that there are girls who need us and we can help.  I spend all my hours connecting people with ways they can help.  I meet the most amazing people.  I have the best life.  I am so very grateful.

I think often about the tiny drop in the bucket that I am.  But I am a drop.  I am a blink.  I can fill my life with meaning, as Reuven’s father  in The Chosen tells him:

“Human beings do not live forever, Rueven, we live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So we may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? I learned a long time ago, that the blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. The span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so that its quality is immeasurable, though its quantity may be insignificant. A man must fill his life with meaning; meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest, when I am no longer here…” (147)

I feel the same.  There is a line in the scriptures that describes how we are to waste and wear out our lives doing good.  We are also counseled that, “men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness.”  (D&C 58:27.)  I, too, want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.

Here are some photos from the Gala: